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Programming

Game Boy Zelda Comes With Source, Sort Of 200

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
Jamie found a fun story about a 90s Zelda Game Boy ROM that shipped with the source code- not so much on purpose, but more because the linker padded out the last meg of ROM with random memory contents, which happened to include game source code.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Gay men cannot donate blood in Canada (bloodservices.ca)

Submitted by FoxNSox
FoxNSox writes: A statement recently posted on the Canadian Blood Services Homepage notes that Canadian Blood Services 'announced its decision on the policy of indefinitely deferring any male from donating blood if he has had sex with another male, even once, since 1977 (MSM).'

To reiterate this statement, the Canadian Blood Services committee announced that if any man has had sex with another man since 1977, that man may not donate blood. Put more bluntly, 'if you are gay, we don't want your blood.'

This will certainly add some more wood on the fire for gay rights activists.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Are they really "making waves"? (warcraftrealms.com)

Submitted by
FoxNSox
FoxNSox writes: "As an article from the 26th of May mentioned, Blizzard has announced they are "suing one of the heavily spamming gold sellers, Peons4hire". This came as a result of a post on the World of Warcraft Forums, which outlined Blizzards reasons for this federal lawsuit.

A subsequent post on the same thread reads:
"Our efforts to combat this type abuse will be ongoing, I assure you. Also, keep in mind that Peons4hire was one of the larger organizations focused on in-game spam abuse. Do not underestimate the value of the message this action will send to to others who participate in similar abuse.
In short, we're making waves. :P".
Well, my answer to this (as a frequent WoW player), is that Blizzard does not seem to be "making waves", as they so mention.

Although Peons4Hire has seemed to 'cease and desist' sending spam messages and mail to World of Warcraft players, the volume of spam messages from other 'Gold Sellers' and 'Power Levellers' does not seem to have been hindered.

What is your opinion on this? Are there any other games out there that have a similar issue with spammers?"
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Bring The Visitors To Your Site Using Ezines

Journal by BartTheBear
Provided it is done correctly, Ezine advertising can bring visitors to your website and increase sales. The great thing about Ezine advertising is that you can still target your audience, by advertising in market specific publications.
Novell

Submission + - Microsoft gets Documentation before OSS Community (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
flydpnkrtn
flydpnkrtn writes: "From the InformationWeek article: "Under its controversial alliance with Novell, Microsoft is entitled to receive key technical documentation from the Linux distributor even if that documentation is not generally available to open source software developers, according to a Novell document."

Also from the article:"In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, Novell revealed a number of new details about the Microsoft deal."

Is this just more Novell-bashing material? Or is this "no big deal"? And of course this type of thing runs contrary to the 'spirit of the GPL'..."
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Submission + - First Direct3D game and benchmarks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Relic released a patch for Company of Heroes, their RTS set in WW2, May 31st to make it the first commercial game to take advantage of Microsoft's Direct3D 10 API. This patch adds half a dozen graphical improvements when run in d3d10 mode to a game that already was one of the prettiest RTS games out there. Legit Reviews is the first to provide benchmarks of three of nvidia's 8800 variations against AMD's 2900 to see how the new chips stack up when running a game in the API they were designed for.
Intel

Twenty Five Intel CPU Coolers Tested 123

Posted by CowboyNeal from the unseasonably-warm-this-year dept.
Kez writes "Over recent years coolers have grown increasingly exotic in design, striving for good cooling performance and low noise even with the most power hungry of CPUs. But sometimes that comes at a price, be it straining the motherboard's socket to its limit, or the wallets of PC enthusiasts. Investigating which coolers do their job well without snapping your motherboard in two, HEXUS.net reviews 25 LGA775 coolers."
Privacy

Photo Tagging as a Privacy Problem? 143

Posted by Zonk from the unflatteringscarf-needstogetahaircut-newshoestoo dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Harvard Law Review, a journal for legal scholarship, recently published a short piece on the privacy implications of online photo-tagging (pdf). The anonymously penned piece dourly concludes that 'privacy law, in its current form, is of no help to those unwillingly tagged.' Focusing on the privacy threat from newly emergent automatic facial recognition search engines', like Polar Rose but not Flickr or Facebook, the article states that 'for several reasons, existing privacy law is simply ill-suited for this new invasion.' The article suggests that Congress create a photo-tagging opt-out system, similar to what they did with telemarketing calls and the Do-Not-Call Registry." How would you enforce such a registry, though?
Games

What Kids Really Think About Kids' Games 79

Posted by Zonk from the eat-it-gramps dept.
marcellizot writes "For a hobby that's supposedly childish, real child gamers have quite a hard time of it. When they're not having every avenue of fun scrutinized for nasties and bad influences, they're often being sold game ideas that are boring and old even when the adults of today were young. Pocket Gamer asks, what do kids really make of today's kids games? 'Both Polly and Andrew both agreed that there were more good games for kids than bad overall, but most of the games they showed weren't just for kids at all. This betrays the difference in perception between parents and their children. Most of them aren't looking for the same old killing - instead, they want something that genuinely entertains them.'"

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